“Upwards of 56 billion land animals and uncountable sea creatures are killed every year for what nonvegans regard as food. Most of those who die are extremely young. If they were humans, we would look on them as infants or babies, children, adolescents. These are, of course, statistics and it’s all too easy to look on them as a mere mathematical exercise. However, the issue becomes less easy to sweep under the carpet when we stop thinking of numbers in general, but as a group of individuals – an unthinkably massive group. It is almost certain that with very few exceptions, each individual knew fear, pain, deprivation and suffering throughout his or her pitiful existence. If we could have looked into his or her bewildered eyes, we would have seen that he or she had hopes, needs and preferences although these were never recognised. He or she might have favourite foods, friends or pastimes but may never had the chance to experience these. Their individuality was disregarded because in order to legitimise our theft of their lives, their joy and their purpose in this world, in order to attempt to justify our brutal manipulation of their reproductive systems and our forcible destruction of their relationships as we mutilate and murder their babies, we refuse to recognise them as moral persons, as the sentient beings that science has declared them to be. We give them numbered or coded tags, punching holes in their fragile ears to attach these, or we notch their tender ears with nicks, cuts and shapes to signify our cataloguing of the walking dead as our resources. And ever the jokers, some find amusement at those who chortle that they ‘never give a name to anything I’m going to eat.’ For millions there is no time left, their only lives that they value as I do mine and you do yours, are being wrenched from them as I write, their blood spilling through gashed throats onto killing floors everywhere. No respected resting places await their last remains, only a supermarket shelf, the casual, thoughtless convenience of a soon forgotten meal, digestion and excrement. That will be the epitaph of these mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. So when you wonder why I keep going ON, it’s because no matter how much flak vegans have to take, it’s nothing compared to what the sweet and vulnerable victims of nonvegan choices are suffering, and will continue to suffer until all ears hear the vegan message. We say we want a peaceful world, we say we hate violence, we say we hate cruelty. Great. Let’s walk the walk and live those values by taking violence off our plates.”
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:29:22 +0000
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